Mastering Your First 100 Days as a General Counsel: Five Key Takeaways

An organization's general counsel (GC) is a heavily sought-after role and the penultimate career goal of many lawyers. GCs get to lead a legal department while also contributing to the strategic growth of an organization.

Traditionally, a general counsel role was associated with higher job satisfaction than traditional law firm roles. However, Axiom's in-house counsel survey revealed declining satisfaction in the GC role, with burn-out and shifting priorities constituting major contributors to the decline. The stress of the role can be even more acute for those transitioning into a general counsel role for the first time.

Axiom recently hosted a webinar on Mastering Your First 100 Days as General Counsel that provided tips and insight to help new GCs achieve high job satisfaction and performance as they begin their new role. The event was moderated by legal tech expert Amanda Rubio, with first-hand insight provided by the following panelists:

• Margaret Minister, General Counsel, Evisort
• Jerry Levine, General Counsel, ContractPodAI
• Ashlin Quirk, General Counsel, Axiom

What did the webinar reveal? Five key takeaways:

1. Embrace Change Management
2. Dedicate Time to Learning
3. Utilize Organizational Resources
4. Leverage Technology & Automation
5. Foster a Collaborative Culture

Looking for more educational resources for GCs and DGCs? Find more legal webinars and blog posts for GCs.

Takeaway 1: Embrace Change Management

As the saying goes, "The only constant is change." This sentiment was echoed continuously by the panel of experienced GCs. As general counsel of an organization, there will always be changes to adapt to, such as changes in law, staff, and organizational priorities, lines of business, and key priorities.

Change, of course, does not stop after the first 100 days as a GC. However, a new General Counsel's first 100 days are particularly laden with change for the GC and the organization. As Ashlin Quirk explained, even experienced GCs feel like they are starting anew when they start a new GC role: "I'd say this is probably my third time doing a first hundred days exercise. While I was in my prior role, we merged with a larger competitor, and I then was responsible for the legal department of both sides of the business. So that's almost like starting anew, and you have a new executive team to build relationships with."

The first 100 days provide an opportunity to embrace inevitable change. New GCs are in a prime position to be proactive in identifying areas to change and develop systems to manage changes. GCs should take time to assess existing processes, workflows, and resources. Suggestions for effectively assessing legal operations to identify areas for improvement and positive change include:

• Identify areas where the organization or department is struggling. For example, if the legal department struggles to keep track of contracts, that's an area where changes should be implemented. That could mean internal process improvements or employing a contract management program.
• Conduct polls of organizational teams on the business side of the house to gain insight into where they think legal is being successful and where they believe it needs improvement. In some cases, a "legal issue" is more of an organizational issue where legal can offer solutions or highlight areas for improvement. For example, sometimes contracts get held up because the business staff doesn't do something on their end, like click an "I accept" button — not because legal is "slow." These are solvable issues that will improve the expediency and reputation of the legal department.
• Evaluate whether some of the legal department's responsibilities are better suited for business teams. Legal teams are costly and sometimes not the best department for certain responsibilities, even though there is some tie to legal. For example, sales playbooks can be developed to guide salespersons in negotiating routine contracts. Legal would then only be tasked with final review or negotiating complex deals.

Takeaway 2: Dedicate Time to Learning

Another theme throughout the webinar was to dedicate time to learning, both in the first 100 days as general counsel and beyond. There is a learning curve, and general counsel must maintain a broad range of working knowledge in multiple areas such as labor and employment, intellectual property, corporate transactions, contracts, and enough litigation knowledge to consult with outside counsel. GCs must also learn areas to respond to business changes. For example, if a business is considering expanding into a new country, counsel must research the regulatory environment of that country to advise the business on the proposed change and implement protective mechanisms. And, as all lawyers know, the legal landscape is constantly evolving, necessitating ongoing education.

Panelists understood the many demands on a GC's time and suggested consuming relevant materials in consistent, bite-sized chunks. Margaret Minister explained: "And so just staying abreast of those and devoting a period of time each week to stay on top of it in bite-sized doses, I think, is the most effective way to do it. Rather than having some lofty goal of getting a master's degree in AI, why not just do it today? Spend a little bit of time every day reading up on whatever the topic is that is of relevance to your industry."

Fortunately, today, there is a seemingly endless pool of information that GCs can draw from to learn new areas of law and stay ahead of the curve regarding regulatory changes. Methods of learning include:

• Webinars
• Conferences
• Podcasts
• Online courses
• CLEs
• Research platforms such as Westlaw and Lexis (including using their helplines and transactional tools)
• Industry associations like the Association for Corporate Counsel
• RSS feeds
• Email newsletters

In addition to ongoing general education, panelists suggested issue spotting for areas to focus on learning when reviewing business documentation, such as meeting minutes. For example, discussions regarding customer concerns around compliance with email communications highlight such regulations, data privacy and security, and other areas as important areas of focus for continued learning.

Takeaway 3: Utilize Resources

New GCs can make their transition easier by not trying to go at it alone and instead utilizing internal and external resources. By using existing resources, new GCs can avoid reinventing the wheel and focus on moving the legal team and organization forward.

In many cases, the legal team will still be in place and can help bring the GC up to speed on the department's current policies, procedures, past issues, and current concerns. Learning from existing team members exponentially speeds up a new GC's ability to start contributing to the organization. Business team members are another important resource for understanding the intersection of legal and business as well as the organization's overarching goals. Conversations with legal and business team members have the added bonus of helping foster trust and openness.

In addition to personnel, written organizational resources like handbooks, policies and procedures, memorandum, and meeting minutes are another useful resource for new GCs. These and other internal documents offer invaluable insights into the organization's structure, historical decisions, goals, and operating rules.

As far as external resources, the educational resources discussed above are vital. Additionally, there may be programs or people that can help a new GC quickly begin helping the legal department support the organization's goals and growth.

Amanda Rubio highlighted that using an alternative legal service provider (ALSP), like Axiom, to hire flexible legal talent can effectively clean up outstanding tasks and orphaned projects. For simpler projects, legal interns can be an invaluable, cost-effective resource.

Takeaway 4: Leverage Technology and Automation

Another throughline from the webinar is that embracing technology and automation can help GCs streamline legal operations, alleviate work overload, and keep departmental costs down.

Gone are the days of the legal industry using archaic technology. Countless types of legal tech can help a legal department streamline operations and allocate legal staff to positions that truly require a legal education and experience. Today's legal tech ranges from simple to cutting-edge. Below are just a few of the many legal tech offerings todays GCs can take advantage of:

• Contract review and drafting AI
• IP management platform
• Contract life cycle management system
• Cloud-based project management programs
• Electronic document management platform
• Compliance AI/technology
• Digital and automated calendaring
• Data Analytics
• AI-powered legal research

What tech stack is best will depend on the specific organization, as legal needs and budgets vary greatly.

Automation utilizes tech to create systems that work automatically. Automation typically takes some time to set up on the front end: the automation system needs to be developed, and then legal tech needs to be acquired and set up to carry out the automation. Automation can be as simple as setting a prompt so that every time a contract is uploaded, an email with the agreement is automatically sent to an administrator or having a program automatically populate a contract based on a sales intake form.

During the webinar, Margaret Minister highlighted the time-saving benefits of technology automation: "How do I, as AGC, keep myself and my team from being overwhelmed by workloads? Oh, technology use. Use technology wisely and automate, automate, automate…"

Takeaway 5: Foster a Collaborative Culture

Finally, collaboration between GCs (and their departments) and other departments and organizational leaders was a theme throughout the webinar.

Legal departments exist to support the organization's growth and success. To be successful in that function and avoid the all-too-common situation where legal and business teams feel like they are on opposite teams, fostering a collaborative culture between the departments and with leadership teams from the beginning of a GC's time in the position is imperative. GCs should also be mindful to encourage intra-departmental collaboration, which can create a powerful legal team.

To learn more about fostering a collaborative corporate culture, read Axiom's blog post on 4 Steps for Building a Collaborative Culture Between Legal & Business Teams.

💡 Set yourself and your team up for success within your first 100 days as a general counsel.